The inspiration behind THE ISLE OF WIGHT MURDERS

The idea for this January set Solent Murder Mystery, THE ISLE OF WIGHT MURDERS (no. 5 in the DI Andy Horton series of currently 17) came from a location, as most of my crime novels do.  This time it was, yes you've guessed it, the Isle of Wight, which is a favourite place of mine.

I chose to set THE ISLE OF WIGHT MURDERS around a very popular area for visitors and visiting sailors, the Bembridge Lagoons, Bembridge Harbour and the National Trust land abutting the beach of the Duver, which was once a very popular links golf course.

The novel opens on a cold grey January morning in Bembridge Marina on the Isle of Wight, where Andy Horton has decided to put in on his small yacht. It's hardly the sailing season but after a difficult Christmas - his first spent apart from his young daughter, Emma - and following some tough criminal investigations, Horton, has decided to take a few days break. He also needs time to think through the startling revelations he's uncovered about his mother's disappearance thirty years ago.

Until two months ago he'd always believed his mother, Jennifer, had abandoned him because she'd grown tired of having a young kid in tow. During an investigation into the discovery of a body on a burning boat (THE HORSEA MARINA MURDERS no. 3) he learns that this might not necessarily be so. Then the death of an elderly lady in a nursing home (THE ROYAL HOTEL MURDERS no. 4) throws up more revelations and a link to Jennifer's disappearance. Andy needs to consider how important this is to him, should he pursue his own personal investigation or leave it in the past?

Sailing helps Horton to relax but he barely gets the time to do so when walking across the abandoned golf course on the Duver near Bembridge Marina he finds himself facing a distraught young woman with a gun in her hand leaning over a corpse in one of the discarded bunkers.  When Thea Carlsson professes to be the dead man’s sister and psychic, Horton’s old adversary, DCI Birch of the Isle of Wight's Criminal Investigation Department, is convinced she is mentally disturbed and the killer, but Horton is not so sure. He finds himself drawn to Thea, perhaps because he recognizes someone who, like him, is haunted by their past.


Although he dismisses her psychic powers he nevertheless feels the presence of his mother on the island. He tells himself that can be explained by a vague memory of going there with her as a child, (it is five miles across the Solent from their home town of Portsmouth) but it can't explain how, when with Thea, he feels close to Jennifer as though she is trying to tell him something through her. Perhaps that is wishful thinking on his part.

While investigating the murder of Thea's brother, Horton also has some personal problems to deal with, such as trying to get access to his eight year old daughter, Emma, despite his estranged wife, Catherine's, attempts to prevent him.

As the murder investigation in THE ISLE OF WIGHT MURDERS progresses, and Detective Superintendent Steve Uckfield of Portsmouth's Major Crime Team joins Horton, more deaths unfold.  The killer is a surprising revelation.

See where all the DI Andy Horton Solent Murder Mysteries are set.

(THE ISLE OF WIGHT MURDERS was previously published as Blood on the Sand)

"Horton is my new favourite detective- life continually kicks him in the teeth but he always gets up again until he finds the murderer(s)!" Yvonne, Amazon

"Like Ed McBain, Rowson works many subtle variations on the procedural formula (including very interesting relationships between Andy and a couple of his superiors). A definite winner." Booklist